


Here To Help

by AdamantSteve



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Civilian AU Clint, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:46:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2316524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdamantSteve/pseuds/AdamantSteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil works for SHIELD, and his days are as long and tiring as ever. One day, someone new starts at Phil's local grocery store. (spoilers: it's Clint).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here To Help

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came out of nowhere! Has been a WIP in my google drive for an age and I rediscovered it the other day. 
> 
> Had early help from sidbiscuits, thank you! And Dunicha beta'ed :)
> 
> I'll unofficially dedicate this to Raiining and Ralkana, who I both owe fics to! I promise, they (and you!) are in my thoughts daily.

"Up late or up early?" The cashier says, startling Phil out of his glassy eyed stare into the middle distance. It's a fair question; it's 5am. 

"Late," Phil replies, offering a bland smile to the young man that's ringing up his items. Phil's never seen him before, and his temporary name badge suggests he's new - one name taped over with CLINT scrawled on top. 

 

"It's my first day," he tells Phil when he notices where his sleepy attentions are focussed. "Well. Night." 

"Did Mauritzio die?" Phil asks, because, well, Mauritzio had to have been pushing 90.

"The old guy? Oh! No, he won the lottery." 

Phil raises his eyebrows at that and the guy - Clint - grins. "I know, right? Said he's moving to Boca Raton to find himself a girl." 

 

Phil can't help but chuckle at that. In all the nights he's been coming to this grocery store after work, he's never once seen Mauritzio crack a smile or move much beyond the checkout counter. 

 

The guy bags up Phil's milk, juice and cereal and reads out his total. Phil eyes the scratch cards behind him and purses his lips. "How much are they?" 

"Scratchies? A dollar. You feeling lucky?" 

"I'll take one." 

He grins at Phil again, and now that Phil’s brain is kicking into gear he notices just how pretty the kid is as he hands over his cash. He has bright eyes and a crooked grin, could be a real catalog beefcake except he’s rough around the edges and has the air of someone who’s all sorts of trouble when he wants to be. "Here ya go," he says, placing the card on top of Phil's change. 

 

Phil's about to turn and leave when the kid stops him. "Hey, do it here! I'll buy one too and we'll see who wins." 

 

It's already after 5, so Phil shrugs and puts his bag back on the counter. The place is empty save the two of them, and maybe the kid is bored. All Phil has waiting for him at home is an unmade bed from this morning and a bowl of cornflakes for dinner. He can stand to be around ‘Clint’ a little longer.

 

Phil's change was all notes, so he doesn't have a coin. Clint hands him a quarter from beside the cash register but then pulls it away before Phil can take it. "You gotta promise to give this back, ok? It's my first day and I don't wanna get kicked out for stealing." 

Phil huffs a laugh. "I'm not gonna steal a quarter from you." 

"You gotta promise!" 

"I promise." Phil's chuckling now, and Clint is laughing too when he finally hands over the coin. It's a particularly shiny one, Phil notes as he readies himself to scratch off the card's silvery surface. He hasn't done a scratch card in forever and isn’t sure what it is that made him choose to do one now. Perhaps Mauritzio being gone made him see the space in a new light.

 

"Alright," Clint says, squaring his shoulders and then shaking out his limbs as if preparing for some feat of strength. It makes Phil notice those shoulders (well muscled, but from hard physical work rather than the gym, Phil thinks) and the arms attached to them. He hopes Clint sticks around for a while. "You ready?" 

Phil laughs and starts scratching away at the card. Clint does the same and then -- nothing. They're both duds. 

 

"Dangit," Clint says, though he doesn't sound particularly pissed off. "I was gonna go to Boca Raton." 

 

"Maybe next time," Phil says, stifling a yawn as he picks up his groceries again and rolls the quarter back across the counter. "Goodnight." 

 

"Goodnight," the kid chimes back.

 

-

 

A week later and Phil's exhausted as the automatic doors slide open. He sighs to himself as he wanders down the aisles, dodging people since it's kind of early. Well, early by Phil's standard. In regular people time it's just after nine. Phil eyes up the frozen pizzas, trying to decide if he can justify cereal for dinner again. A can of soup is a little too sad to eat for dinner, but a can of ravioli might not be.

 

As he's pondering the societal implications of his potential dinner options, someone brushes past him on their way to the back of the store. It's the kid from the other night, just coming in for his shift by the look of it. He's wearing a leather jacket and holding what Phil at first takes for a courier tube slung across his back, but at second glance could be a quiver of arrows. Weird.

 

Phil's weighing up bagged salad vs a head of lettuce (the bagged salad is winning) when the kid appears at his side, wearing an employee shirt instead of the jacket. "You don't want that, dude," he says, plucking the bag of leaves out of his hand. "S'been sitting there for days. Here," he reaches to the back of the display (and Phil doesn't purposely check out his ass as he does it, it's just in his line of sight) and picks one from there. "Fresh!" he says when he straightens up and hands it over. "Always go for the back, man." 

 

Bagged definitely wins.

 

Phil thanks him and places the salad in his basket, trying to work out what to put with it that won't be too depressing but won't require much effort. The fact that it's apparently Clint's shift has ramped up the pressure; seeming sad and lonely to himself is one thing, seeming that way to the cute young checkout guy is somehow much worse. The fact that Phil cares is even worse than that. He really needs to get a life.

 

Eventually, he settles on steak. It's tasty and won't require much cooking or effort, and, well, it's red meat, and Phil's a red blooded MAN, even if he is going to eat it with a bag of salad. 

 

He picks it out from the back of the meat fridge.

 

A stumbling drunk couple check out before Phil, buying the exact frozen pizza Phil had been eyeing up himself. 

"You got a new badge," Phil says when he steps up to the counter, and Clint pretends to polish it.

"It's official! My name is Clint, and I'm here to help!" 

Phil smiles and feels lighter than he has all week.

 

Clint peers at the steaks' sell-by label and then winks at him. "Back of the case?" 

Phil laughs as he nods, and realises the last time he laughed was a week ago, standing right here. 

"See? Here to help!" Clint rings up the total and Phil hands over his card. 

There's no one in the queue behind him, and Phil decides to be a little bit reckless for once. "And a scratch card." 

To hell with it, it's only a dollar.

 

"You wanna do it together again?” he reads from Phil’s credit card before handing it back, “Phil?" 

Phil smiles at the sound of his name being spoken by this man.

"Sure." 

 

Again, Clint hands him a shiny coin, and Phil realises that the coins neatly lined up on the side of the register are all just as shiny, as if someone's purposely saved them for precisely that reason. 

 

They're both duds again, but Phil's not too disappointed. 

 

His steak is delicious. 

 

-

 

Normal people don't work this late, Phil thinks, stepping into the yellowy lighting of the grocery store at 2 in the morning. It's empty again, and it's definitely too late for cooking even a steak. He's eyeing two cans of ravioli and trying to work out which is the slightly less pathetic option, when the checkout guy appears. 

 

"Hi! " he says, chipper as always. 

Tired as he is, Phil smiles. "Hello." 

 

Phil puts one of the cans back on the shelf and starts moving towards the cereal aisle when he realises Clint's still standing there. "What?" 

 

"Um," Clint says, "It's just. Well there's... stay here." He dashes off, returning shortly with a pack of egg pasta ravioli from the fresh foods section and two pots of sauce. "Just... this takes the same amount of time to make as the canned stuff, and it's like, five million times better. And the sauce comes free!" He holds the stuff up and then shrugs. "Or, you could have the canned one if you, uh, just don't like... food." 

 

Phil's had a really, really long day, full of people being that particular brand of professional where they do nothing of use despite pulling the right faces and humming the right sounds. He's tired, and he just wants to eat something and go to bed, but finally, right at the end of this shitty, stupid day, this guy who owes him nothing is offering him a packet of spinach and ricotta ravioli and it's the most helpful anyone's been in forever.

 

So it's probably that combined with the fact that all he's eaten since breakfast was a stale danish that makes Phil laugh as hard and as sharply as he does. Clint just stands there, and Phil feels bad for making him think he's laughing at him, shaking his head and holding out his hands for the ravioli.

 

"Thank you," he says once he's able to, giving Clint the can in exchange. Clint frowns at him but then he's smiling too. 

"You're welcome." 

"You're here to help," Phil says, eyeing the badge and grinning. 

 

-

 

"I wasn't laughing at you," Phil explains when he’s at the checkout, another bag of salad amongst his few items (from the back of the display, naturally). "You are the first person I've dealt with all day that's been genuinely helpful." 

 

"That sucks," Clint says, turning over a tube of toothpaste to look for its barcode. "What do you do that people are so unhelpful?" 

 

Phil shrugs. It's a question civilians ask him sometimes. "Finance," he lies. 

Clint hums. "Do you hate it?" 

That pulls up Phil short. "Oh... No? It has its bad points but I believe in what the company is doing." Which is true. Even if these days, his job is a little less field agent, a little more Dilbert. 

"You mean, making money?" 

Phil looks at him for a moment and then realises what he's saying. "Right! Making money, doing deals. It's..." he's making a mess of this. If his colleagues could see him right now he'd be out of SHIELD in an instant. He's overtired and not thinking clearly at all. Dazzling Smile Nightshift Guy Clint isn't helping matters much. 

"It's a job," Phil finishes lamely.

 

"Fourteen forty-six," Clint says, and though Phil didn't actually ask for one, he passes a scratch card over with his change. Phil chuckles but doesn't refuse it, scratching it off with one of his own coins, though it doesn’t appear to have any impact on his luck.

 

-

 

Phil manages to make it home at a reasonable hour the next time he ends up at the store. He’d planned on making dinner as soon as he got home, but got tied up in work emails when he made the mistake of checking his phone as soon as he got in the door. The fact that Clint’s shift seems to start at nine on a Wednesday has nothing to do with it, Phil tells himself, because if he’s making a special effort (leaving the suit jacket at home, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows) to impress the checkout guy, then he’s in bigger trouble than he thought.

 

Still, Phil can’t deny the quiet buzz of satisfaction he feels when he walks past the window and not only sees Clint through the window, but the man actually waves and smiles at him. 

 

Phil has time tonight to _browse_ , reading the labels on cartons of juice and packets of spice, picking up all manner of staples that his apartment’s cupboards are woefully bare of. Who doesn’t have rice, for goodness sake? And pasta? He grabs a half-dozen jars of pasta sauce, but shies away from the cans of soup. 

 

He picks up some steaks, mushrooms and the makings of a salad and is perusing the wines when Clint appears to put some cans of nuts on a shelf nearby. “Hello,” he says, smiling, and Phil does his best version of an ‘I didn’t see you there’ smile in return. 

 

“Oh are you making beef bourguignon?” Clint asks, and Phil peers into his basket, frowning.

“I’m not even sure what that is.” Which isn’t entirely true; he’s fairly sure it’s some kind of stew, but, well. Any excuse to make conversation.

Clint laughs and shakes his head at himself. “Oh, you just have most of the ingredients and you’re looking at wine so I figured -” He stops and shakes his head at himself.  “Sorry, it’s none of my business.” 

“It’s ok,” Phil hurries to say. “What is it?” 

 

“It’s like a beef casserole? It’s pretty simple - you just cook off the meat, fry up some shallots, mushrooms, bacon…” He keeps stacking tins of nuts as he reels off a recipe that Phil only barely follows, too distracted by Clint’s arms in their movements to and from the shelf. He hums and nods and manages to retain the list of ingredients he’s yet to pick up and then Clint grins. “And bon appetit! Depending how much you eat it’ll last you a few days.” 

 

Phil’s about to say thank you, and put the bottle of wine he’s been holding for the last ten minutes in his basket before moving off to find shallots, but Clint grins. “I’ll write it down for you.” He dashes off, leaving half a box of nuts on the floor and Phil still holding his bottle of wine.

 

Once he’s gotten everything he thinks he needs, Phil heads for the checkout. Clint looks up and grins before looking back down at something. He really has written down the recipe for Phil. “Here you go,” he says, holding out a scrappy piece of a cardboard box with purple sharpie scrawled across one side of it. He shrugs. “I couldn’t find any paper.” 

Phil takes it and marvels at the thing; it’s practically illegible with the bleed of the pen and the absorbance of the cardboard, not to mention Clint’s handwriting, but it seems straightforward enough, and Phil reads it through whilst Clint rings up his items feeling like he’s won a special prize. Like he’s the millionth customer.

 

Clint tears off a pair of scratch cards as he always does, and they scratch them quickly as another customer, an old lady, is making her way to the checkout. “Let me know how it goes,” Clint says once their cards go in the trash, duds as always. 

“I will. Thank you, Clint.” 

 

-

 

Phil’s not meant to even be on active duty rotation. It was an unofficial year out of the field, partly as rest from the last round of injuries he sustained and partly as punishment for getting injured in the first place. Fury has a strange set of value systems. But there was a _thing_ and Phil was the only level 6 agent not dealing with an _other_ thing, so he took a team and investigated and, well. The drugs are helping but he’s still walking with a cane and feeling like more of an old man than ever. 

 

He could cook, with all those pasta sauces from last time, those staples that can easily add up to a simple meal, but all he really wants to do is eat and fall into bed for a day or two. He could get delivery probably, but he goes to the store. It’s not that he wants to see Clint and have that beautiful smile shone his way, he just, well. The store is convenient. He can just grab all the stuff he needs at once and won’t have to leave the apartment again for a while. He probably needs toothpaste, right?

 

“What happened?” Clint says when he sees Phil, perusing the medicine aisle for a big bag of heat pad things for his knee. The drugs must be kicking in, because it’s not til Clint speaks that Phil even realises he’s right behind him. He turns and, in doing so, twists his knee like an idiot. 

“Shit!” He hisses, and Clint reaches out arms to steady Phil before stopping himself. Phil composes himself and nods curtly. “Sorry. I uh, was in a collision.” 

Clint’s eyes go wide, and Phil actually has to look away - he’s half humiliated, half vindicated. He’s happy to see that Clint appears to care, at least. 

 

“Do you have a list? You can take a seat out back and I’ll run round and get all your stuff for you.” 

Phil starts shaking his head, but Clint’s face is lined with concern and he hesitates. 

“I don’t have a list,”  he admits, regretfully. 

“Well, what do you need? Dinner, right? And breakfast for tomorrow? And lunch? You’re taking some time off, yeah?”

“A day, maybe.” Phil clutches his cane and tries not to wince at the pain in his knee. 

 

“You work too hard,” Clint says with a grin. “Follow me.” 

 

Phil does as he’s told, following Clint out to the back of the store and through a doorway into the messy courtyard between the backs of the stores on the block. There are a couple of upturned crates, and Clint dusts one off with his hand before gesturing for Phil to sit there. 

“You allergic to anything?” Clint asks, and Phil shakes his head and smiles. Sitting on this grubby crate is the first place he’s felt even remotely relaxed in ages.

 

He eyes the other back doors. “I don’t want you to get in trouble,” Phil says quietly. “I should go.” 

“I’ll be fast,” Clint calls, already back inside the store. 

 

Phil sits there, feeling like he’s likely to spot Lady and the Tramp eating spaghetti and meatballs in a corner, idly letting himself imagine sharing one extra long noodle with Clint, when he spots something in a dark corner by the doorway to the grocery. It’s an archery target, with half a dozen arrows sticking out of it. Listing by its side is the tube Phil saw Clint carrying a few months ago. So it _was_ a quiver. 

 

It’s a nice thought - Clint coming out here on his breaks and practicing archery, of all things. Phil wonders what he’d say if he asked for a demonstration, wonders what Clint looks like when he takes aim. 

 

He’s still staring at the holes when Clint pops his head back out. “You need anything else aside from food?” 

 

Phil shakes his head and gets up, pleased that Clint doesn’t try to help him. He doesn’t want to be this old invalid, even if it is nice to have someone doing something for him. He follows Clint back out and into the store and sees that there are two carrier bags already packed and waiting for him. 

 

“You live close, right?” he says, once Phil has gotten his wallet out of his pocket. 

“Upstairs, other end of the block,” Phil replies, realising as he says it how it’s not really what you’re meant to do, going around telling essential strangers where you live, even if Clint probably knows this information already. 

“I can help you to the door?” 

“That’s very sweet of you to offer, but I’ll be fine. Besides, you’ve already gone way beyond the remit of your badge.”

Clint looks down at his badge and laughs. “It’s a solemn oath I made, you know! They don’t just give these badges out willy nilly. It’s my _duty_ to help people!”

 

Phil realises he’s grinning back, and he so _wants_ to have Clint escort him to his door, help him with these groceries. He lets himself drift into a daydream about the two of them being friends, making dinner for each other and falling asleep in front of the tv, maybe… He comes-to when he realises Clint’s looking worriedly at him. 

“Sorry,” Phil says, shaking himself out of it. He starts picking up the bags in one hand and then Clint gasps. 

“Our scratchcards!” he says, turning away to grab a pair along with some coins. He pushes one across the counter. “Maybe you’ll get lucky this time.”

 

Getting a good hold of his shiny quarter, Phil starts scratching away, unsurprised that it’s not a winner. 

“No way!” Clint exclaims, “I won ten bucks!” 

“Instant karma,” Phil smiles, handing over two dollars to pay for the cards. “On me.” 

 

“Thanks, man,” Clint says. “You sure you’re gonna be ok?” 

“Tougher than I look.”

“I don’t doubt it.” 

Clint winks at Phil, and if Phil’s cheeks go a little warmer, it’s only cause of the medication he’s on.

 

-

 

Phil’s embarrassed when he comes down off the drugs and his knee doesn’t feel twice the size it’s meant to anymore. Not that he was that high, but wow, what was he thinking? He turns into a bonafide idiot when he’s around a random friendly shop assistant? What’s wrong with him?

 

If he wanted to, he could look into the kid, type the name Clint and the name of the store into the SHIELD system and have a bunch of likely candidates ready for internet stalking in seconds. But he doesn’t want to because that’s creepy, but also because it’d be admitting that he does have a thing for him, which is just pathetic and silly. Clint is too cute to be into Phil Coulson, faux city worker suit-guy who works too late and doesn’t eat properly. He’s all arms and charm and shoulders, and sparkling eyes and a grin that can’t help but look salacious and filthy. 

 

He probably shouldn’t go in there for a while. Clint probably has admirers in all his regular customers. Phil’s not special, he’s just one of many. Clint probably doesn’t even remember his name.

 

Phil shakes his head and gets back to work. He has other things to deal with - his car-crash of a love life (or lack thereof) is not one of them.

 

-

 

Phil’s not even on the next mission, on desk duty til his knee is 100% again, but when he sees what’s happening on the satellite feed and realises where it’s happening, he can’t not show up.

 

SHIELD is on Phil’s street working with an unusually cooperative NYPD to clear people out of the way of gelatinous things that are coming out of the drains and manholes all along the street. They move slowly but inexorably, apparently impervious to the bullets being rained on them by agents from all sides. The bullets pass right through them, clunking to the ground pathetically after being slowed of their initial trajectory. A few people have been caught up by blobs, consumed whole and then suspended inside them like aspic, motionless, but according to heat signatures, still alive.

 

Hill is running point, and Phil watches her stalking along the other end of the street. The blobs don’t seem to know what’s worth grabbing onto and what’s inanimate, so there’s a few cars slowly being engulfed, a number of lampposts and a few pigeons caught up inside the blue, slowly moving bodies. The blobs seem to be distinct from one another, occasionally touching but never coagulating, which Phil’s glad about, since their number doesn’t seem to be diminishing, more and more of them rising out of the street as he watches. 

 

“Hold fire,” Hill barks over the comms. “It’s not doing squat. Ballistics, try something more... explody.” 

 

The street is suddenly eerily quiet but for the slow wet sound of dozens of man-sized slime creatures creeping along the street. Phil’s about ten yards away from one of them, unafraid since they’re moving so slowly, and fascinated by the light of the sun shining through its transparent body. This one in particular seems to be intrigued by half a sandwich that’s been abandoned, flattening itself out as it glides slowly on top of it and then pulling it up into its body. Phil watches bits of lettuce and bread drift apart as they rise up inside the blob, and then he sees it - a slightly darker area that the sandwich doesn’t pass through. Its brain? Heart? 

 

He’s just rising his hand to his mouth to point this out via his comm when a sound behind him - where he’d thought there had been a police line - startles him. It’s another blob, sneaking up on him. He turns to run and twists his knee, cursing as he crumples and goes down.

 

“I need someone to run interference,” he says into his comm, “I’m surrounded.” 

The sandwich blob has started in his direction too, and Phil can see another beginning its extrusion from the sewers nearby. He struggles to his feet and looks around. If he’s quick, he can probably dart between a blob-covered car and a blob with a pigeon in it, but he can’t run, and he really doesn’t want to _fall into_ one of these things, which his useless knee seems to be actively trying to make happen. He used to be a good agent, dammit. He’s turned soft and useless since Fury put him on a desk.

 

“Anyone hear me?” he says into the comm unit again. Maybe it got damaged in the fall. “I really don’t want to get eaten by a goddamn blob.” 

 

The longer he stays in one place, the more the blobs surround him, and Phil’s about to take off his jacket and try draping it over one of the smaller ones to see if he can’t Walter Raleigh it right over. He’d rather not as he hates to break up a good suit, but well, dead or poorly dressed isn’t _too_ hard a choice. 

 

“Anyone?” he calls as he shucks off the jacket. “Hello? If anyone can hear me, I think there’s a darker area that -”

 

He stops talking, cause something whistles by his head. He turns to find that sandwich blob has… an arrow? sticking out of it. An arrow sticking out of the heart/brain/darkbit. As Phil watches, the edges of the blob begin to quiver, making the end of the arrow shake in the air. The shivering continues for a brief moment, and then the whole thing suddenly pops like a waterballoon and stains Phil’s suit with splashes of what appears to be… water.

 

Before he can investigate further, Phil hears sirens going in the distance and his comm unit crackles into life again.

“Coulson! Get out of the street,” Maria yells. “Ballistics is coming in.”

 

Maria does love her explosives. 

 

Phil manages to run back to the end of the street, looking in on the store because it’s right there, and he’s not too proud to admit he’s worried about his favourite shopkeep. Clint seems the type to try to help, and Phil hopes he’s not currently inside one of those blue things because of it. 

 

“Phil! Out of the street!”

 

He ducks inside the store; no sign of Clint. He’s not out back on one of the crates either. Phil curses under his breath and heads back inside, only to find one of the blobs blocking the main entrance. 

“Oh, come _on_.”

 

Phil goes out the back again and looks around. He could close the door, but that might just trap him further if any more of the things come up from somewhere out here. There’s a drainpipe and enough missing bricks in the walls that climbing up isn’t out of the question, so Phil sends a silent prayer up to the gods of dry cleaning and makes a go of it.

 

His knee protests but he makes it onto the low roof at the back of the store with minimal damage to his outfit. He can’t see the street from here, but ducks when he hears the ballistic team’s ‘take cover’ klaxon, and feels the corrugated iron beneath his feet shake with the impact of what sound like grenades.

 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he hears from Maria. He clambers up to the next level of roof with the aid of some barred windows and a piece of roofing that is definitely not up to code whilst listening to one side of Maria’s argument with either the Mayor or someone from the WSC. He can’t tell who wants to use more force.

 

Then Sitwell’s voice comes through. “We’ve got civilians! Hold fire! Civilians in the street!” 

Phil hates not being able to see anything. He’ll never take his apartment’s crappy little window for granted again. 

 

“What was that?” Says Sitwell again, followed by a very unmanly scream and a splashing noise. “What-”

“Is that an arrow?” Says Maria, and then Phil hears another splashing sound from Sitwell’s comm and a few ‘ew’s that Phil assumes come from the civilians. 

 

There are more splashes and then Maria telling Ballistics to get hold of anything they can that shoots arrows rather than bullets or explosives. Phil looks over the edge of the roof of the store and see Sitwell rushing some civilians down the street, half of them soaked to the bone. Further up the road are two dark blue spheres about the size of bowling balls, each with an arrow sticking out of them. As Phil watches, another blob explodes into nothing but water and a bouncy bowling ball with an arrow sticking out of it. He looks around from his precarious position and still can’t figure out where the arrows are coming from.

 

“Clint,” Phil calls from the top of the roof, two storeys above the ground. The arrows move so fast it’s hard to tell what angle they’re coming in on. More and more blobs go down, progress being made quickly enough that there’s a team in hazmat suits sweeping the balls into one general area by the time Phil’s made it to the ground. He’s in an alleyway that runs between two buildings and then cuts off abruptly in a dead end, the kind you see people being beaten up in in movies. He’s about to go back out, find a way around, when someone’s suddenly behind him. 

 

Phil might have a bad knee and be out of practice with some of his field combat maneuvers, but his reflexes are still second nature, so in the time it takes to decide what to do, he already has his gun out and pressed up against the jaw of -- oh. 

Clint tries to hold his hands up in surrender, but he’s pressed against the wall by Phil’s entire body, and the bow in one of them is half stuck behind him, so it’s difficult.

 

“Phil?” 

 

Phil takes a second to disengage and then slowly steps back when it seems like Clint’s going to stay put. He keeps the gun trained on him.

 

“Clint? I _thought_ it was you - I saw the arrows and... _who are you?”_

Clint’s face falls, wide eyed surprise turning to anger and confusion. “Who am I?! Who am _I?_ Who the fuck are _you_?” he spits, pushing back into Phil’s space. “You been spying on me this whole time?” 

 

Phil shakes his head. “No! I… should I have been spying on you?”

 

They kind of stand at an impasse for a moment, too close but not quite close enough, or not far enough apart. Either way, it’s awkward.

 

Phil puts the safety on his gun and puts it slowly back in its holster, Clint watching every move he makes. He’s about to step back, get back to business, but then Clint grabs a fistful of Phil’s dirt-streaked shirt and yanks him closer, looking at Phil’s lips and licking his own as he comes to a decision. The kiss is hard and brief, more a statement of intent than anything romantic. It’s a punctuation mark; the end of one paragraph and the beginning of another. It might not be a ‘good’ kiss but it’s enough to leave Phil more off kilter than he thinks he’s ever been.

 

“You don’t work in finance, do you?” Clint asks, eyes flicking down to the gun. There’s a fear in his face, and Phil doesn’t think he’s frightened of the gun per-se, just what it means. What it means is that Phil has one, that he lied about what and who he is. 

 

“You aren’t just a cashier,” Phil reminds him, but it doesn’t do much to quell the look of concern on Clint’s face. 

 

“Let me go?” he says, even though he’s the one holding on to Phil now. “Please? I just need a couple hours.”

Phil knows this behaviour, seen it in the more unusual assets he’s brought in - Clint might be one of the good guys now, but he didn’t always used to be. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re just the hot cashier at the store. I have no idea who you are aside from being the only person actually taking those things down.” He reaches past Clint’s arm and into his inside pocket. “I’m Agent Phil Coulson, of SHIELD, and I’m pretty sure we have an opening for someone with your skillset.”

 

Clint takes the card with one hand, still holding onto Phil’s shirt with the other. “How do I know this isn’t a set up?” 

“I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

 

Clint’s face goes through a half dozen thought processes as Phil watches before putting the card in his pocket and pulling Phil in for another kiss that he’s helpless to resist, a little softer this time, but not by much. “Ok,” he says when he finally lets go of Phil’s shirt. “Just promise not to arrest me after.” 

Phil nods. “Ok.” 

“And buy me dinner.” 

 

Phil blinks twice and then nods again, goofy smile already taking up residence on his face. “Promise not to shoot me,” he replies. 

 

“Deal.” 

 

-

 

They manage to take down the rest of the blobs pretty easily once Clint isn’t hiding in the shadows trying not to get seen. Phil tells the rest of the team that Clint’s an archery enthusiast that’s just helping out, and it’s enough of a scramble that no one’ll ask for further explanation til later. Clint takes out the majority of blobs before ballistics and engineering manage to make a kind of straw-shooter, which seems to work even quicker than the arrows do once they figure out how to shoot them straight. Eventually they’re left with dozens of weird brain-balls and some very soggy agents getting hosed down in the street. 

 

“SHIELD are going to want to talk to you,” Phil says to Clint once they’ve disappeared back into the store. Clint looks like an animal that thinks it’s about to get taken to the vet. He paces up and down behind the counter, and Phil stands right where he always does, wondering how even this little bit of normalcy became so complicated. 

 

Clint eyes the back door. 

 

“I promised to buy you dinner,” Phil reminds Clint, which stops him in his tracks. Of everything, _that_ stops him from pacing up and down. “And I like to keep my promises.” 

 

Clint narrows his eyes and seems to be considering something. Phil just stands there, as bland as he’s ever been.

 

“Dinner,” Clint says eventually.

 

Phil shrugs. “I mean, if you’re not busy.”

There are debriefs and forms and countless other paperwork that Phil ought to be quietly telling Clint that SHIELD needs him to do but quite frankly, he doesn’t care about any of that right now. Besides, Clint’s slowly starting to smile at him, so really there’s not much else happening as far as Phil’s concerned.

 

“You wanna take me to dinner.”

Phil’s bland demeanour falls away under the warmth of Clint’s smile, because he finds himself smiling back across the checkout.

 

“Maybe after a shower, but I can’t think of anything more appealing right now than taking you out for a nice meal.”

Phil puts his hands in his pockets. It might very well be the adrenaline crash of the end of a mission, but he can’t stop himself from smiling right now, and he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet as he watches Clint’s smile broaden into a grin. He seems a little confused, honestly, but he nods.

“This isn’t some kinda recruitment thing, is it?” 

Phil shakes his head and then stops himself, because he ought to be honest. 

 

“Well, SHIELD would love to have you, and we probably pay a heck of a lot better than this place, but,” he shrugs, hands still in his pockets, “paying you back for all the delicious meals you’ve facilitated the last few months is higher on my personal list of priorities. Plus the whole saving my ass thing back there.” He tips his head towards the window, out to where Clint stopped him from getting sucked into a blob and saved the day and everything.

 

Clint starts to say something and then stops, running a finger along the metal edge of the counter before glancing up as he finishes. “It’s a pretty good ass, so.” 

 

Phil can’t help the laugh that bubbles up out of him, because oh. _Oh_. 

“So it’s a date?” 

Clint considers him, considers the whole situation by the look of concentrated thought on his face, before making a decisive nod. “Here,” he tears a scratch card from the roll behind him and flips it over. He writes something on the back in sharpie; a phone number. “I’ll meet you here at… what time do people go on dates?” 

It takes Phil a moment to reply, but he gets there eventually. “Eight?” 

“Eight, then. And if you can’t make it cause of, y’know,” he nods out into the street where SHIELD agents and cops are cleaning up, and Phil understands. Clint holds out the card and Phil steps closer to take it, only for Clint to pull it out of his reach. 

“Really?” he says, stepping right up to the counter and holding out a hand. Clint grins before leaning across the counter to kiss him, just a whisper of breath and the quickest brush of lips before he moves away, but Phil doesn’t know what to do about it. He staggers back, scratchcard in his hand, trying to play it cool even though he’s probably blushing. 

“Eight. I’ll see you then.” 

Clint shoots him a lazy salute, and Phil gets back to work. 

 

-

 

 


End file.
